The problem with Yves Saint Laurent was that he was a man who understood his time period better than anyone, but he didn't like it. Real artists live their own lives in parallel. It's the artist who transforms his times.
Pierre BergeIn April 2007 I learned that Yves Saint Laurent had a brain tumor, and he died on June 1, 2008. During those 14 months I had plenty of time to think about what would happen. There was only one solution: the auction. An auction establishes memory. That's what I want to do.
Pierre BergeThere was an exchange between me and Andy Warhol. We met, we liked each other, we appreciated each other. He would come to us for Easter in Marrakech. In September we would meet up in Venice. And every time I went to New York I would spend some time with him at the Factory, where we would have dinner together. He's a man that I admired deeply. He shook up the notion of painting - not as much as Marcel Duchamp had done, but he was part of the same general movement. And then we both admired art deco.
Pierre BergeLet's talk about that for a moment, about the couple that Yves Saint Laurent and I were. Like all couples we went through "storms," as the Jacques Brel song says. But if there's one area where we never had the slightest disagreement, it was art. Never. Not once. Not about painting, not about opera, not about theater. We were always in complete communion. Of course, that's how all of the collection came into being.
Pierre BergeI love Marcel Proust, but I leave him to his nostalgia. I don't approach art the way most people do. I don't get into Proust by imagining that I am Charlus or whoever. It's the same thing in painting - I try to look at it objectively. There's no pathos in that. It's like Bach's "Goldberg Variations." They have to be approached with a scalpel.
Pierre Berge